Accentuate the Positive

Try to see your home with a fresh perspective and arrange each room to bring out its best attributes, including:

"How we live in a home and how we sell a home are often 2 different things."

Open draperies and curtains to let the light in during the showing

Remove all unnecessary clutter from your attic, basement and closets to better display spacious rooms (consider storage or a garage sale to dispose of extraneous items)

Arrange all your rooms neatly and remove excess furniture

Keep fresh, clean towels in the bathroom

Use candles or air fresheners to make the room smell pleasant

Put Your Home in the Best Possible Light

Strategically lighting your home, even during daytime showings, can create a cozy mood and highlight positive attributes
of each room, so:

Avoid the use of overhead lighting that makes rooms look washed out and lifeless.

Be creative and arrange lamps to help smaller rooms seem larger, and large rooms seem more intimate.

Use lighting to highlight the "living areas" of your home, such as a pair of chairs near a fireplace, or a table in a breakfast area.

Inside:

Clear all unnecessary objects from furniture throughout the house. Keep decorative objects on the furniture restricted to groups of 1, 3, or 5 items.

Clear all unnecessary objects from the kitchen countertops. If it hasn't been used for three months…put it away! Clear refrigerator fronts of messages, pictures, etc. (A sparse kitchen helps the buyer mentally move their own things into your kitchen.)

In the bathroom, remove any unnecessary items from countertops, tubs, shower stalls and commode tops. Keep only your most needed cosmetics, brushes, perfumes, etc., in one small group on the counter. Coordinate towels to one or two colors only.

Rearrange or remove some of the furniture if necessary. As owners, many times we have too much furniture in a room. This is wonderful for our personal enjoyment, but when it comes to selling, we need to thin out as much as possible to make rooms appear larger.

Take down, or rearrange certain pictures or object on walls. Patch and paint if necessary.

In General:

Try to look at your house "through the buyer's eyes" as though you've never seen it or been there before. Any time or
money spent on these items will bring you back more money in return, and hopefully a faster sale.